1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to online advertising.
2. Background
Certain advertisement (“ad”) networks enable ads (e.g., contextual ads, display ads) to be served to users who visit the Web sites of publishers that are participating in the ad network. Advertisers generate the ads and buy placements (a.k.a. inventory) for those ads on the publishers' Web sites usually based on the anticipated audiences for those sites and/or the content of those sites. These ads may be graphical (“display ads”) or textual. A placement represents a publisher's agreement to serve a trafficked (i.e., specified) ad to users when the users visit the publisher's site. The publisher often serves the trafficked display or contextual ad contemporaneously with other content associated with the publisher's site. Similarly, sponsored search advertising systems serve ads (“sponsored ads”) to users that enter queries on search engine websites, often alongside the responses to the queries.
Ad networks typically include ad serving systems that determine which advertisements are to be provided to users. In conventional contextual or display ad networks, when a publisher receives a page view from a user, the publisher sends an ad call to an ad serving system. An ad call is a request for an advertisement. The ad call usually contains some information about the users visiting the publisher's site and to whom an ad is to be served. For instance, this information may include any suitable cookie-based information, including but not limited to age of the person, sex, geographic location, browsing history, segments the users fall into, etc. The ad serving system selects an advertisement from an ad inventory based on these various factors. The ad serving system also determines which segments (i.e., subsets) of the users are able to receive each advertisement. For instance, a first advertisement may be selected for provision to a first segment of the users, a second advertisement may be selected for provision to a second segment of the users, and so on.
Conventional techniques for selecting segments for receipt of advertisements are typically based on prior knowledge regarding performance of particular segments with regard to other advertisements or semantics regarding names of the segments. For example, information pertaining to performance of targeted segments with regard to previously provided advertisements that are directed to a certain subject matter may be used to determine which segments are likely to perform well with regard to a present advertisement that is directed to the same subject matter. However, it is possible that few or none of the previously provided advertisements are directed to the subject matter of the present advertisement.
In another example, an advertisement initially may be provided across all possible segments. Information pertaining to performance of each segment with regard to the advertisement may be used to determine which of the segments are to continue receiving the advertisement going forward. However, a substantial portion of a time period over which a corresponding ad campaign is to run may be used for gathering such information. Accordingly, the advertisement is often targeted to particular segments for only a fraction of the time that is allocated for the ad campaign.
In yet another example, the names of the segments may be semantically compared to the name of an advertisement to determine which segments are to receive the advertisement. For instance, the name of a segment may include the term “auto”. Accordingly, the segment may be selected for receipt of an advertisement relating to an automobile. However, segments that may perform well with regard to an advertisement but that do not have names that include a matching semantic may not be selected for receipt of the advertisement.
The amount of information that is available with respect to some segments may not be sufficient for such conventional techniques to determine whether those segments are to be selected for receipt for an advertisement.